James Clad

James Clad consults for energy and investment firms, and is senior adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses and at IHS/Jane’s and IHS/Cambridge Energy Research Associates-CERA). During 2002-10, he served as US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia, and as senior counselor at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Agency for International Development. From 1995-2002 he was a Luce Foundation professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and, concurrently, Director/Asia-Pacific Energy at CERA.

Trained as New Zealand lawyer, his career has focused on Asian commercial and security affairs, broadening after 2002 to include the Middle East. In the 1980s-90s, he wrote for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and received fellowships from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and from Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. He also served in the New Zealand diplomatic service.

His first book, Business, Money & Power in Southeast Asia (1991), surveyed Asian capitalism while his next, After the Crusade (1996), critiqued US foreign policy. His most recent book is a volume on political geography, Borderlands of Southeast Asia. In 2009, he received the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award and, in June 2011, became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, a royal honour. He is married to Aurora Medina, a World Bank official, and has three children.